Dubbed Recognizr, the app essentially works like this: the user points the camera at a person across the room. Face recognition software creates a 3-D model of the person’s mug and sends it across a server where it’s matched with an identity in the database. A cloud server conducts the facial recognition since and sends back the subject’s name as well as links to any social networking sites the person has provided access to.

Some would call Joseph Andrew Stack, the software engineer who crashed his small plane into an IRS office building in Austin, a domestic terrorist. But there are fans on Facebook and Twitter who are now claiming he’s a “true American hero.” Facebook has since deleted the “Joe Stack” fan pages, but others seem sure to follow.

Once we enter what James Cascio called the “participatory panopticon” and the permanent record of our actions are stored away in the prison of social media archives such as Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, WordPress and the like, diminishing returns come into play. The ability of behavioral economists to accurately profile users and anticipate their actions declines proportionately to the increasing awareness of the observer in the life of the observed.

Online social networks such as Facebook are being used to express and communicate real personality, instead of an idealized virtual identity [such as though found in online games like SecondLife or WoW].

Break the Matrix has seemingly failed to accomplish its goals. The goals of the website were to establish a social networking community based on free speech, libertarian ideology, and political fundraising.

Source:  Wired
By Noah Shachtman
October 19, 2009  | 
12:03 pm  | 

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